It was not until June 8 that Washington settled these
delicate affairs of official etiquette sufficiently
to enable him to attend to details of administration.
The government, although bankrupt, was in active operation,
and the several executive departments were under secretaries
appointed by the old Congress. The distinguished
New York jurist, John Jay, now forty-four years old,
had been Secretary of Foreign Affairs since 1784.
He had long possessed Washington’s confidence,
and now retained his Secretaryship until the government
was organized, whereupon he left that post to become
the first chief-justice of the United States.
Henry Knox of Massachusetts, aged thirty-nine, had
been Secretary of War since 1785, a position to which
Washington helped him. They were old friends,
for Knox had served through the war with Washington
in special charge of artillery. The Postmaster-General,
Ebenezer Hazard, was not in Washington’s favor.
While the struggle over the adoption of the Constitution
was going on Hazard put a stop to the customary practice
by which newspaper publishers were allowed to exchange
copies by mail. Washington wrote an indignant
letter to John Jay about this action which was doing
mischief by “inducing a belief that the suppression
of intelligence at that critical juncture was a wicked
trick of policy contrived by an aristocratic junto.”
As soon as Washington could move in the matter, Hazard
was superseded by Samuel Osgood, who as a member of
the old Congress had served on a committee to examine
the post-office accounts. There was no Secretary
of the Treasury at that time, but the affairs of that
department were in the hands of a board of commissioners,—­this
same Samuel Osgood, together with Walter Livingston
and Arthur Lee. To all these officials Washington
now applied for a written account of “the real
situation” of their departments.

Several months elapsed before he was in a position
to make new arrangements. The salary bill was
approved September 2, 1789, and on the same day Washington
commissioned Hamilton as Secretary of the Treasury,—­
the first of the new appointments, although in the
creative enactments the Treasury Department came last.
Next came Henry Knox, Secretary of War and of the
Navy, on September 12; Thomas Jefferson, Secretary
of State; and Edmund Randolph, Attorney-General, on
September 26, on which date Osgood was also appointed.
What may be said to be Washington’s Cabinet was
thus established, but the term itself did not come
into use until 1793. At the outset no more was
decided than that the new government should have executive
departments, and in superficial appearance these were
much like those of the old government. The Constitution
made no distinct provision for a cabinet, and the
only clause referring to the subject is the provision
authorizing the President to “require the opinion,
in writing, of the principal officer in each of the
executive departments, upon any subject relating to